Childhood Action Obsevation and Execution, an fMRI Study

Brain development and brain areas that are associated with action execution and action observation as well as their overlap was investigated with fMRI in children and adults. Age-associated differences in brain activation were investigated by comparing those groups (Morales, Bowman, Velnoskey, Fox, and Redcay, 2019).

A network of areas of the brain that is active when persons perform an action as well as they are observing others performing the same or similar actions is called the mirror neuron system (MNS). The study investigated the neural regions that are implicated in the execution and observation of actions in addition to their overlap in children and adults. The participants had to perform, as well as to observe the same action of reaching-grasping, controlling for attentional shift during the condition in order to improve the specific brain activation that is related with observation and executing action that lays beyond the relationship with general attentional demands (Morales et al., 2019). According to the investigators, the study did allow them to make an identification of shared cortical areas among obseving and executing an action in addition to measuring age differences in those areas in order to better investigate the mirror neuron system activation during development.

During action observation and action execution the group of children showed comparable brain activation as compared to the adult group. There were, however, age related differences found during both action observation and action execution. During action execution the adults showed enhanced activity in the right superior parietal lobe as compared to the group of children (Morales et al., 2019).

This study found also support for the functional significance of the mirror neuron system as it is found by the overlap of action-observation and action-execution conditions during the task. The motor abilities and action representation skills of children were especially associated with the execution-obsevation overlap. There was found a probable dissociation among the mirror neuron system and the association among age and motor abilities and action representation related to the development of the mirror neuron system. It was found that motor abilities as well as action representation capabilities showed a direct execution-obsevation overlap and the motor ability improvements in children were more dedicated to age than by this execution-observation overlap. Accordingly, it is suggested that age might be a better indicator of fine motor ability development in childhood as compared to neural mirroring aspects. Finally, it is further suggested that the development of the mirror neuron system might be one of the aspects that underlies the changes in age associated action representations (Morales et al., 2019).